Peggy Nash at the Finance Committee

There may be some good arguments to share some services. We know there are still some questions remaining around this.

In 2011 the government created a new agency, Shared Services Canada. They're charged with cutting the IT costs for more than 100 e-mail systems and more than 300 data centres in many federal departments. Their $2-billion budget is about 40% of Ottawa's yearly $5-billion in IT spending. So I do want to raise this.

There may be some real logic to consolidating some of these IT services. However, the Privacy Commissioner has warned that the consolidation may risk personal data. In particular, the spokesperson for her office has said:

We have underlined the fact that consolidating the email functions of so many federal organizations into one service could result in greater vulnerability for personal information.

The chief statistician, Wayne Smith, has warned that moving StatsCan's IT to Shared Services Canada may jeopardize the quality and confidentiality of the information it gathers.

So we have these questions. I guess I'll just ask Mr. Barr about this.

Thank you for being here so late. We really appreciate it.

Have you heard of these concerns about privacy? How is Shared Services Canada responding to the privacy issue?